Politics, Entertainment, Editorials, Essays, Rants Life news, emotional dialouges, and other Weirdness from Larry Bernard out of The Cigar city of Tampa

Monday, March 06, 2006

As you may know

I consider "Homeland Security" an idiotic idea. It was and is largely unnecessary to achieve the security goals our country needs and was done to make people feel good. So it goes against my two disdains in modern politics, that which isn't needed and that which does nothing except -look- like it is doing something. So this little story surprises me none and gives me a little chuckle.

WASHINGTON - The agency entrusted with protecting the U.S. homeland is having difficulty safeguarding its own headquarters, say private security guards at the complex.The guards have taken their concerns to Congress, describing inadequate training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and biological threats

Just breath that in.

Had the FBI/CIA/INS/NSA all did their jobs as dictated by the law of the land back in 00 and 01 September 11th wouldn't have happened. A new Cabinet secretary, moving over waves and waves of buercratic morass, and centralizing more powers over things like terrorism and natural disaster which are -by their very nature- random and requiring a more flexible response shows why this has occured. The entire corperate culture is the same kind of grotesquely failed corperate culture that the MBA pardigm has resulted in on wall street.

A good strategy is to have the resources and people who will have the ability to use them strategically scattered. By doing this it prevents some of the prioritization and failures of it that this ridiculous administration has put through homeland security.

lets look at some of the other brilliant failures we see at DepHomSec

_They have no training in responding to attacks with weapons of mass destruction;

_Chemical-sniffing dogs have been replaced with ineffective equipment that falsely indicates the presence of explosives.

_Guards with radios have trouble hearing each other, or have no radios, no batons and no pepper spray, leaving them with few options beyond lethal force with their handguns.

Oh... and the security Guards they hired and haven't given the resources they need... this isn't their first time screwing up a federal contract.

Over the last two years, the Energy Department inspector general concluded that Wackenhut guards had thwarted simulated terrorist attacks at a nuclear lab only after they were tipped off to the test; and that guards also had improperly handled the transport of nuclear and conventional weapons.

So once again Big Government fails because it believes to much in its own power, while simultaniously failing to execute that power